Friday, September 26, 2014

A spiritual abode of any sort cannot exist with an equally
thriving material surrounding. A few months back when I was visiting Haji Ali,
a peer’s shrine in Mumbai I found a series of shops selling flowers and
offerings for the shrine. I was not surprised to see them for I had seen such
shops in the vicinity of every shrine in India. They force the devotees buy
flowers and silk cloths, along with incense sticks and camphor cubes. Folks
coming from distant and remote villages spent their hard earned money on these
in order to get the blessings of the gods and saints. What surprised me at Haji
Ali were shops selling wrist bands, head bands, bandanas, caps and t-shirts that
flaunt the red-green-yellow combination of Rastafarian colors and the images of
Che Guevara. Standing there I was wondering who would be the potential
consumers of such vignettes from a peer’s shrine. I tried to connect the
Rastafarian colors with the Black Panther Movement, though they are not
connected ideologically but are connected with the theme of blackness. Black
Panther Movement had an Islamic tinge to it which later became the movements
like Nation of Islam with fire brand leaders like Malcolm X at its helm. The
sociological reason that I could find there in seeing a lot of Rastafarian
merchandise was the class of the devotees. A lot of people from lower and lower
middle class visit Haji Ali that is located at the edge of the Arabian Sea,
with the path towards it getting submerged in the high tide hours. Lower
middle class youth revel in their rebellion and by cultural seepage effect they
get to worship icons like Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Bob Marley and even Mike
Tyson. Youth reach their icons of rebellion through different ways; the rich
ones via pub, discotheque and university routes and the poor from streets,
slums and other subaltern routes. Bob Marley of a weed smoking college boy and
Bob Marley of a slum kid are two Bob Marleys. However, merchandise of rebellion
eventually takes them to the market place.

Coming out of Ramana Ashram we decide to eat some breakfast.
We collect our footwear from the counter. The old men give us strange glances.
I ask Shibu whether they are expecting some money from us. Shibu tells me that
no monetary exchanges are entertained in the Ashram premises. Though they all
look like sadhus who have renounced the world, the bond of currency notes has not
yet severed by many of them. They try to tell us something in crude Tamil which
we ignore and walk off. Contrasting to the scene that we have just witnessed is
another scene in which we see sadhus and mendicants sitting at the gate of the
Ashram and smiling at the devotees. Shibu speaks to them and promises to come
back and give them alms. Right across the road there is a row of shops and one
of which is a restaurant. It looks like a standard restaurant that serves the
standardized food catering to all kinds of tastes. As foreigners live
abundantly in Thiruvannamalai, there are restaurants that sell food items that
sound foreign and taste Indian. There is a small super market, a shop
with trolleys and computerized billing system; there are coffee stalls and tea
stalls, and there are stalls that sell tender coconut water. We are not looking
for anything other than some light dosa or vada. Manjurian food sounds to be an
assault not on our taste buds but also on our consciousness. The misshapen red
balls that hide its contents in the generic word Manjurian send shivers down our spines. One restaurant’s flex board advertisement invites us with all
Punjabi food available on earth. Puris sit ballooned over plates and eating it
would obviously cause bloating of our stomachs. So we walk a few paces towards our
left to reach Sheshadri Swami Ashram where there is a canteen that serves
simple breakfast.

(Sheshadrin Ashram entrance, Thiruvannamalai)

Sheshadri Swami was a Siddha, a spiritually liberated
personality who could perform wonders and even change shape and assume the
guise of animals and birds. Sheshadri Swami was active in Thiruvannamalai even
before Ramana came to live in the hills. It was Sheshadri Swami who had found
the young Ramana inside the Viroopaksha caves and brought him out to the world.
By the time Sheshadri Swami saw the young sage, Ramana, his thighs had been
eaten by termites and other pests. Till the end of his life, Ramana Maharshi
used to get puss filled boils on his thighs once in a year. He used to believe
that the termites’ poison that had gone inside his body tried to come out
periodically through these boils. But Ramana suffered the pain with equanimity
and did not cause any fuss over that. He used to work in the kitchen in the
early mornings, right from cleaning and chopping the vegetables to cooking them
deliciously, even when he had severe pain in his thighs. A day of Ramana
Maharshi started with his work in kitchen, attending the cattle, going for walk
in the Arunachala hills, giving darshan to his devotees and once in a while
engaging in discourses. Though Sheshadri Swami did not become as popular as
Ramana Maharshi, their ashrams are adjacent to each other though the ashram of
Sheshadri Swami looks more like a temple than an ashram.

At the canteen in Sheshadri Ashram we eat our first breakfast
in Thiruvannamalai; dosa, vada and tea. The woman who serves the food does it
with a smile on her face. She is old but agile. Another woman joins her after
sometime and her face is covered with turmeric paste. She has flowers on her
hair bun. She must be a married woman doing a job in the canteen. She looks at
us from a distance and smiles at us. Finally she comes near us and asks whether
we needed something more to eat. Thanking her we get up, wash our hands, pay
our bills and walk out. We do not know then that our breakfast and sometimes lunch
are also going to be from this canteen in the coming days. The road just
outside the canteen is now busy. This is the same road that people take for
doing Girivalam. Girivalam literally means Circumambulation of the Mountain.
Giri means Mountain and Valam means going around or circumambulation. The
tradition of going around the Arunchala Mountain is centuries old. Every month,
on the full moon day people from nearby towns and villages come to circle the
mountain. And on the Karthika Poornima day in December people from all over the
world come to do Girivalam. There are people who go for Girivalam every day.

(JohnyML at the Girivalam route. Pic. Shibu Natesan)

Arunachala Mountain is said to be a dormant volcano. Legends
say that this is a manifestation of Shiva in the form of a Mountain. The
profile of the mountain seen from a particular angle looks like the face of
Shiva. It is proven that there is a strange sense of gravitational pull around
this mountain that makes it one of the haunts for sages and people
driven by spiritual quest. Going around the mountain is said to give spiritual strength
as well as physical strength. The total distance around the mountain is around
sixteen kilometers. Ramana Maharshi used to go for Girivalam regularly, at
times alone and at times with devotees who wish to do Girivalam with Ramana
Maharshi. They used to cover the distance in two or three days and Ramana and
his devotees used to take rest in different temples along the way. When Ramana
went alone for Girivalam he took another path right at the foot of the hills
which went through the forest. This route today is not taken by many people
thanks to the unexpected risks involved in it including attacks by wild
animals. There is another route which goes through the villages and fields at
the foot of the mountain and this route is also not preferred thanks to the
lack of road facilities. The outer road that circumambulates the mountain is
taken care of by the state government’s Public Works Department and is
maintained more or less in a good condition. During the full moon days and
Karthika deepam day, the state authorities ban vehicular traffic on this road
and let the road be taken over by the devotees who run into lakhs and way side
merchants who make a good business on these days.

The day we reach Thiruvannamalai is neither a full moon day
nor a Karthika Deepam Day. However, we decide to go for Girivalam. Shibu,
though he has done it several times before, does not know the actual distance. What
he could tell me is that it is quite a long distance. But he assures me that we
could walk slowly, take rest in between and finish it if we feel like or we
could walk back to our resting place. We turn to our right and hit the road.
The weather is pleasant as it has been raining for some days. Cool breeze wafts
by and we feel refreshed after the breakfast. As we walk on, we see a lot of
mendicants walking towards the Ramana Ashram. They are on their way to the
ashram because they want to assure their place in the queue for lunch. They do
not seem to be interested in begging. What do they do after they have enough
food? They relax, says Shibu. They sit and see the world goes by. They do not
have assignments to finish, jobs to do, tasks to complete, broken relationships
to mend, thoughts to think. They are happy in their nothingness. After food
they spend their time sleeping or chatting. They all have found their small
little places of dwelling under the trees or abandoned temples or inns. Could
there be any Malayali mendicants here? There could be, says Shibu. As the
mendicants look alike one cannot discern their regional status. In between we
see a lot of new age Sadhus, neatly dressed in saffron or white clothes,
tastefully drawn religious marks on their foreheads and jute bags filled with
books or fruits hurrying towards the ashram. They must be worrying a lot about
their looks, it seems. They try hard to appear as spiritual beings. We walk past
them and suddenly I see someone who looks like a Malayali sitting on bench in
front of a wayside teashop, sipping tea and in deep thought. Later we come to
know that it is Ganesh Babu, an artist who has shifted to Thiruvannamalai from
Kochi.

(Durvasa Temple, Thiruvannamalai )

We have not yet got the rhythm of walking. We negotiate
between us whether to walk by the right side of the road or by the left side.
Finally we decide to go to the right side. As we walk further we reach a tea
stall with a few people hanging out in front of it. Suddenly someone calls out to Shibu from the tea stall. It is a woman’s voice and the owner of the voice
turns out to be Gayatri Gamuz, a Spanish artist living in Thiruvannamalai. She
beckons us inside and she is seen sitting with her brother who is also a
temporary resident of this holy place. As they catch up with the good old days,
I find it a bit strange as Gayatri seems to have some reluctance to talk to me
directly. Her words to me are formal and she is more focused on Shibu. I find it
strange. Gayatri has been a good friend of mine and I had even written her
catalogue for one of her solo exhibitions. But I tell myself not to worry about
such a small issue. Has Thiruvannamalai started working on me? I do not think
so. Gayatri’s deliberate aversion towards me is a gnawing issue for a while
but I decide not to address it. They speak on for a while, as I stare at the
road vacantly and sip hot tea given to me by the tea maker. After sometime,
Gayatri and her brother take our leave. We stay there for some
more time and drink one more round of tea. Later as we walk on we get our
rhythm. We talk and walk and click a few pictures here and there. I pose before
a gate made in the form of a gaping lion that leads to a public pond which lies
dried now. Almost after a kilometer we see a forking road and we take the right
turn. Girivalam officially starts at this junction as we find the pavements are
laid well with interlocking tiles. As we step on it we feel good.

We are now on our left side. It is said that all the people
who go for Girivalam should walk on the left side of the road. They say that
right side is reserved for Siddhas and invisible beings. If you walk closer to
the hill by the right side of the road you will be disturbing the passage of
the invisible beings. As Girivalam is undertaken from left to right, people hardly take the same road to come back. But it is also a public road so one
cannot insist that everyone should walk on the left pavement. People walk by
the right pavement also but they are not devotees nor are they doing Girivalam.
They are minding their daily business of going to the work place or fields.
Once we are on the left side pavement, we see a number of mendicants sitting
along it. They say hello to us. Some of them speaking in Tamil and many speak
in Hindi and a few of them speaking in English. An emaciated mendicant with a
beaming face speaks to us and asks us to stand at a particular place and look
at the Arunachala mountain from that perspective. Can’t you see Shiva’s face? He
asks. Yes, we can, we tell him. Mountains are like clouds; you mention an image
and look at the hills or mountains or clouds, they start looking like that. I
remember showing Shibu, Tagore in the clouds gathered at the western horizon, from
a hill top. We walk on. Many of the mendicants here expect alms from us. Some
plead. Old women wearing saffron clothes literally beg and it fills us with a
lot of pain. We give some money to them and walk on.

(JohnyML at Girivalam route, near Durvasa temple, Pic Shibu Natesan)

Along the way, we see women at the pavement selling some
kind of a yellow ritual thread. They tell us in the universal language of wayside
hawkers that buying the thread would bring us great blessings. We do not know
what to do with the thread. Also we see women tying a very thin yellow thread
around small coconuts. These are rituals offerings and materials for worship,
we know. We do not know what particular wishes will be fulfilled if we tie them wherever it is supposed to be tied. After a couple of kilometers, we reach a
small temple. It is Durvasa Temple, Shibu tells me. Shibu has already told me
about his rendezvous with a fierce looking priest in his last visit in the same
temple. He exactly looked like Durvasa, Shibu tells me with a chuckle. I look
for the same priest here but he does not look anything like that fearful sage
from the myths.

Durvasa is a wandering sage referred in many places in epics
like Mahabharata. He is well known and revered for his short temper. With
tremendous powers gained by painful penances, Durvasa moves around the land
solving problems of the kings and commoners alike. One day he visits Kanva
Maharshi’s ashram. He sees a young lady sitting there lost completely in day
dreaming. She does not show him customary respect as she is completely unaware of
his arrival. In fact, her name is Shakuntala, the daughter of the celestial
nymph, Menaka. Shakuntala is in love with Dushyanta, a very valiant king. Pregnant
with Dushyanta’s son and the romantic thoughts about her lover,
Shakuntala does not know the presence of Durvasa at all. He gets into a rage
and curses her. Whosoever’s thought she was lost in, he would forget her and
would refuse to recognize her. Hearing the curse, Shakuntala wakes up and
pleads for mercy. Finally he says that he cannot take the curse back. But there
is a remedy. He would remember her if she shows him some kind of a stamp of
love. This is a pivotal moment in the making of Bharat, India. Dushyanta
forgets Shakuntala and abandons her. When he finds his wedding ring inside the
mouth of a fish, he remembers everything and regrets. Finally they are all
reunited. This is the crux of Abhigyana Shakuntalam by Kalidasa. And Durvasa is
famous for his role in ruining Shakuntala’s life, at least for a few years.

(Entrance of Adi Annamalai temple)

There are hardly any temples for Durvasa in the land of
sages and sanyasis. This is one of the rare temples though it is nondescript
and too small to be noticed. However, people from the neighborhood come in
groups and do worship at this temple. What I notice here is a tree with its branches
fully covered with the yellow thread that I have seen with the women vendors
along the road. I do not have anybody to ask about the rituals. Why should one
tie this thread at the branches of this tree? What good one would get if he/she
does so? Somehow I come to a conclusion, as I see a lot of young women tying
this yellow thread around the tree, that they all must be seeking the blessing
of this raging sage for not hampering their lives by making their men forget
them for any reason. Durvasa is supposed to be khipra kopi (short tempered) and
kshipra prasadi (easy to please). So tying of these threads must keep him pleased.
We spend some time near this temple. Sitting at wayside bench we give rest to
our tired feet and watch the village folk thronging around the temple and then
packing themselves on an open truck without any complaints.

We reach Adi Annamalai. It is a pivotal point as far as Thiruvannamali
is concerned. Before the Thiruvannamalai temple was built in 10th
century, this was the first temple therefore it is called Adi Annamalai, the
original Annamalai. It is a very laid down village and the junction has a few
tea shops and sweet shops. A common tap at the right side of the road provides
the village with drinking water. Old women sit around it and wash their clothes
and talk to each other. Elders come around and sit at the tea shops. Weary
foreigners also come here to have their regular tea and silent chats with the
local people. We drink tea from one of the shops and make a few acquaintances
there. Promising them that we would come back tomorrow to do more chats, sketching
and photography, we continue our walking. Adi Annamalai is a halfway point. We
have to finish another ten more kilometres to complete our first day’s
Girivalam. As we walk on sun light becomes sharp. We see serious devotees
walking without footwear. We see people doing salutations to sun. One girl
walks against us and suddenly she stops there at looks at Arunchala Mountain.
Then with studied ease she bends and touches both her palms on the floor. For a
moment we are wonderstruck. We slow down our pace and wait to see what she
would do next. She does not do anything else. Standing there bending like that
for a few seconds she comes back to her normal vertical position and says a
prayer to the rising sun. And without any fuss she walks off. We almost feel
that she did that feat to show off her skills in yoga. My legs pain as the
footwear I have on are not good for long distance walking. We decide to buy another
pair of light walking slippers. A further right turn will take us to the city
side of Girivalam. Now the sunlight has become strong.

(Google map of Girivalam)

As we take a turn towards right, loudspeakers permanently
installed at the pavement play out Shiva chants. Definitely, hearing such
chanting makes someone calm down. But my focus is on my aching legs. I could
feel my legs as two heavy appendages fitted to my body which I am supposed to
haul further. A few more kilometers. We enter the city. We could see one of the
four gopurams of the Annamalai temple. Generally people go to the temple after
Girivalam. It is the beginning and ending point for many. But seeing the crowd
and considering the tiredness we decide to walk ahead further and reach Ramana
Ashram. After walking for more than ten kilometers we are hungry again. From a
comparatively neat shop we eat idli and vada. Once we are back at Arthur
Osborne’s house, it is already twelve o clock in the noon. We take turn to take
bath. Then we lie down on the swinging cot. Shibu tells me some stories. I
listen to it as if I were hearing a lullaby. Has this Girivalam done any good
to me? Have I changed a bit? I do not have the energy or mind to think about
it. What I know is the growing pain at my feet. It eats me up. I sink in it.
And the pain becomes a pool of darkness. Shibu has already slept. The cot
swings slowly. The ancient fan up there makes a light humming noise. Between
the pain in my legs and the noise of the fan, the bed swings me to a different
zone where I meet my sleep, which has been evading me all this while. I embrace
it and then I cease to exist.